What Am I Doing Here? (43 page)

‘I've left Sotheby's,' I said to the Duke of M — .

‘I'm glad to hear it,' he smiled. ‘We had a most disagreeable experience with a man from there. Wilson, I think his name was. He called to ask if he could see my collection. Of course, after
our
agreeable experience, I invited him to lunch. But he started to tell me the price my Guardis would fetch at auction. I had to show him the door.'

‘In the middle of lunch?'

‘Yes.'

‘Tell me,' I asked. ‘Did Interpol catch the thieves?'

‘They did . . . '

Afterwards, in our borrowed clothes – which we borrowed for three more days – we went to the house of a very old lady, who had been among the guests.

She was a famous art historian and expert on Zurbarán. She showed us into her bedroom. The walls were white. There was a four-poster bed with a white coverlet but no curtains. There was a crucifix. On the bed-table were a rosary and a breviary. On the wall facing the bed hung a panel about four feet square: of
Saint Veronica's
Veil by El Greco.

 

A
mong my first jobs at Sotheby's was that of porter in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Whenever there was a sale I would put on my grey porter's uniform and stand behind the glass vitrines, making sure that prospective buyers didn't sticky the objects with their fingers.

One morning there appeared an elderly and anachronistic gentleman in a black Astrakhan-collared coat, carrying a black silver-tipped cane. His syrupy eyes and brushed-up moustache announced him as a relic of the Ottoman Empire.

‘Can you show me something beautiful?' he asked. ‘Greek,
not
Roman!'

‘I think I can,' I said.

I showed him a fragment of an Attic white-ground lekythos by the Achilles Painter which had the most refined drawing, in golden-sepia, of a naked boy. It had come from the collection of Lord Elgin.

‘Ha!' said the old gentleman. ‘I see you have The Eye. I too have The Eye. We shall be friends.'

He handed me his card. I watched the black coat recede into the gallery:

‘So,' I said to myself. ‘Zog's Chamberlain.'

He was true to his word. We became friends. He would turn up in London on some business of Albanians in exile. He fretted about Queen Geraldine in Estoril. He regretted that King Leka in Madrid had to earn his living in real-estate.

He spoke of the works of art that had been his. He had sold his Fauve Braques and paintings by Juan Gris
en bloc
to the Australian art collector, Douglas Cooper. He spoke of the excellent pheasant shooting in his ancestral domain. He had never been to Albania but had spent his life between Switzerland and Alexandria. Did I know, he once asked, that the government of Enver Hoxha was a homosexual cabal?

‘At least, that's what they tell me.'

I soon realised that the Bey was not a buyer but a seller. His straitened circumstances forced him from time to time to dispense with a work of art. Would I, he enquired rather sheepishly, be interested in acquiring some odds and ends from his collection?

‘I certainly would,' I said.

‘Perhaps I could show you a few things at the Ritz?'

I had next to no money. The Directors at Sotheby's assumed that people like myself had private incomes to supplement our wretched salaries. What was I to do? Exist on air? I earned myself a little extra by trafficking in antiquities — until the Chairman told me to stop. It was wrong for members of the staff to deal in works of art because they actively hindered a possible sale at auction.

I felt this was unfair. Almost everyone in the art business seemed to be at it.

But with the Bey my conscience was clear. He refused to sell anything at auction. I don't think he could bear the idea of his things being handled on viewing day by the hoi polloi, by people who did not have The Eye. Besides, he gave me everything as a present. Spread out over his bed at the Ritz would be a cluster of exquisite objects: an Archaic Greek bronze, a fragment of a Mosan chasse, a Byzantine cameo, an Egyptian green slate palette of pre-dynastic period, and many others.

‘Would you like them?' he asked anxiously.

‘I would.'

‘In that case I give them to you! Between two friends who have The Eye there can be no question of money.'

I would wrap the treasures in tissue paper and, taking them to a dealer friend, find out how much I could get for them. I always tried to keep one or two for myself.

A day later the phone would ring. ‘Chatwin, could you spare a few moments to have a drink with me?'

‘Of course I could, Bey.'

We would meet in the Ritz Bar.

‘Chatwin, I've one or two little favours to ask you. You know how tiresome it is to move funds around Europe. Banks are so unobliging these days. I find I've overspent on this visit. I wonder if you could settle a few things for me.'

‘Of course, Bey.'

‘I've been a bit extravagant at the tailor. Three or four suits. Four pairs of shoes at Lobb's. And there's the poor old Bentley! She had to have a new radiator.'

‘I'll see what I can do,' I said.

I went to the tailor and asked for the Bey's bill. I went to Lobb. I discovered from Jack Barclay the cost of the radiator. The Bey's prices were never excessive; but, in the best Oriental tradition, we always had a haggle at the end. Otherwise, the deal would not be a deal.

‘Chatwin, I wonder if you could have a word with the Ritz cashier? I thought of leaving for Switzerland on Saturday week.'

‘Out of the question, Bey. I suggest this Monday.'

‘Alas, that cannot be. On Tuesday Lady Turnbull is giving a cocktail for the Anglo-Albanian Society. As Chamberlain, I have to attend.'

‘Wednesday then?'

‘Wednesday it shall be.'

‘And no more phone calls after today?'

This went on for two or three years. Nowadays, I sometimes thumb through the catalogues of an American museum, or an exhibition of ancient art, and there, illustrated full-plate, will be an object or a painting that passed from the Bey to myself: ‘A unique Cycladic marble vessel . . . ', ‘A Pentellic marble head of a youth from a late fifth-century Attic stele . . . ', ‘A white marble head of a Putto, attributed to Desiderio di Settignano . . . ', ‘A painting of Christ Mocked, in tempera on linen, by a follower of Mantegna, possibly by Melozzo da Forli . . . '

We have one object left from the Bey's collection: my wife's engagement ring. It is a Greek electrum ring of the late fifth century BC. The Bey bought it in 1947 from a Cairo dealer called Tano. I believe it comes from the Tell-el Mashkuta Treasure, most of which is now in the Brooklyn Museum.

The intaglio has a wounded lioness levering with her mouth and forepaw the hunter's spear from her flank. Not entirely suitable as an engagement present, but I think it the loveliest Greek ring I ever saw.

I write about the Bey because people of his kind will never come again. His life, I suspect, was a bit of a sham. The Eye was always young and pure.

 

F
or a year, when I was twenty-two, one of my dearest friends was an old man called Bertie Landsberg. There was a sixty-year gap in our ages. He was a Brazilian of German-Jewish descent. He had been raised by black wet-nurses and in his eyes there was a tropical languor. His family had a lot of ‘useless' land, ‘something the size of Belgium'.

He went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and then to Paris. He commissioned Matisse to paint a Cubist portrait of his sister, Yvonne. His mother would not pay for the painting. Picasso drew him. He bought and restored one of the loveliest and most melancholy houses in the world, Palladio's Villa Malcontenta on the Brenta Canal near Venice.

I took him to the Venice Biennale. We admired Giacometti. He did not like Arshile Gorky. When we came to the Soviet Pavilion, he said: ‘At least it has an awful vitality.'

He taught me that works of art, if they are to live, should never be bought or sold, but given or exchanged. This, to a boy flogging pictures at Sotheby's, was news. He gave me a lovely fragment of in Archaic Greek marble. I sold it in one of my crises, and have felt guilty ever since.

Bertie's wife, Dorothea, had been a Boston spinster stranded in Venice after America came into the War. He took her to Brazil. He showed her the Baroque towns of Minas Gerais, Ouro Prêto and Conghoñas do Campo.

The rooms in Brazilian country hotels are compartments in which to sling a hammock. One night, Bertie complained over the wall: ‘There must be a hole in my mosquito net. I'm being bitten to death.'

‘Take mine,' said Dorothea.

‘This', Bertie said to himself, ‘is a woman I could marry.'

My future wife, Elizabeth, was American. On hearing her tell a story, I, too, felt this was a woman I could marry.

Her great friend at Radcliffe was the daughter of the Director of the National Gallery in Washington. These were the years when a very rich couple, the W — 's, had installed themselves on Fifth Avenue in an apartment of French boiseries and royal French marquetry furniture. Among the pictures they had a Vermeer, bought on the advice of art experts. The Director of the Gallery thought it good for his girl's education if she saw this legendary collection. Elizabeth went along for tea. Understandably, Mrs W — was agitated. Elizabeth, although short-sighted, registered her disapproval of the sheets of plate-glass laid over the marquetry. Both girls were ravenous after the train trip from Boston. They went through one plate of cucumber sandwiches and caused consternation by asking for another.

Elizabeth looked up and said, ‘Look! There's a fly.'

‘There can't be,' Mrs W — cried. ‘It can't have got in' – unless the air-conditioning and humidifying systems had broken down.

‘There is,' said Elizabeth, shooing the fly from the sandwiches.

‘It must have come in with you.'

 

1988

I
t is 1944 in New York and Miss Lillie, alias Lady Peel, ‘Lady Parlequipeel', is sauntering down Madison Avenue in her inevitable embroidered mobcap. She is a big hit in the musical
Seven Lively Arts
at the Ziegfeld Theatre. The war is still on and the art business is slow. Showbiz is booming. I haven't a clue to what time of year it was. Let us imagine it was spring. She passes the galleries along Madison Avenue and a picture takes her eye.

‘Lawdie Gawdie!' It's the Valentin Gallery.

She sweeps in.

The assistant sweeps her into Mr Valentin's office. He rises to his feet. ‘Miss Lillie. I am honoured you come to my gallery.'

‘The room', says Bea, ‘was covered in plum velvet and there was a plum velvet easel.' ‘Mr Valentin,' she begins, ‘my friend Vincent Price tells me you have a beautiful painting by M . . . Mo . . . Mo . . . '

‘Modigliani.'

‘Well, let's shorten it to Modi.'

The assistant goes to the shelves behind the plum velvet curtain and pulls out a painting of a young Belgian boy. He has a mass of blond curls and rosy cheeks; he wears a sandcoloured jacket ; I forget the other details.

‘Is that a Modi?'

‘It is, Miss Lillie.'

‘I never saw anything so frrrightful in my life. If that's a Modi, I'm leaving!'

She sweeps out.

On the threshold she turns to Mr Valentin.

‘And how much were you proposing to ask me for the Modi?'

‘Miss Lillie. I have always been a great admirer of yours. I was suggesting fifteen thousand dollars.'

‘Fifteen thousand
dollars
! You can keep it! I could offer you seventy-five hundred, but fifteen thousand!'

‘Miss Lillie, if you really like the picture, I give it for seventy-five hundred.'

She goes back to the plum-coloured office and writes out a cheque. Since the war is still on, Mr Valentin agrees to keep it and ship it when hostilities are over.

He shipped Modi in a crate. It went upstairs into the attic of Bea's house on the river at Henley-on-Thames and she forgot about it.

The first time I saw Bea and the Modi was in 1963 when the Chairman of Sotheby's came into our office with Bea, the Modi and Bea's American friend and protector.

He said we would store the picture indefinitely. It would be insured for fifty thousand pounds.

That Sunday I went for lunch and supper at Henley. We laughed, sang and Bea played the piano. I was Noel and she was Gertie. We had perfect pitch:

The last I heard of the Modi was a telephone call from the Chairman's secretary about ten years later asking me if I knew the details of the insurance on the Modigliani and whether Beatrice Lillie signed the insurance form. Her protector had turned up one day at Sotheby's and asked for the picture back. The porter, supposing it to have been left there last week, let him have it. He took it down the road to Christie's where it sold for over two hundred thousand pounds.

The money went to pay her nursing bills.

I hope that Bea in her dotage in New York remembered the rosy-cheeked Belgian boy.

 

When you have written five books, people begin to comment on your style. They have compared my bleak, chiselled style with Hemingway, Lawrence (D.H., thank God, not T.E.). Yes, they are my writers. For bleak passages I have also looked hard at
Hedda Gabler
.